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Background   
   - Midas Product Family   
   - What is Midas?   
   - Midas Family Tree   
   - Current Frameworks   
   - Framework Interoperability   
   - The Midas Philosophy   
   - What is NeXtMidas?   
   - NeXtMidas Design   
   - NeXtMidas Benefits/Features   
   - NeXtMidas Option Trees   
   - Why use Java?   
   - Why use Java? (ctd.)   
   - Why use Java? (ctd.)   
Common Midas Concepts   
Getting Started - Part 1   
Getting Started - Part 2   
Working with Files   
Option Trees   
Macros - Part 1 (Basics)   
Macros - Part 2 (Graphics)   
NetBeans - Part 1 (Setup)   
NetBeans - Part 2 (GUIs)   
NetBeans - Part 3 (Profiler)   
Eclipse - Part 1 (Setup)   
Eclipse - Part 2 (GUIs)   
Primitives   
Applets & WebStart   
Maps & Imagery   
X-Midas Interoperability   
RMIF & Remoting   
Installing NeXtMidas   
Support & Maintenance   
File Handlers   


  • NeXtMidas Design:
    • NeXtMidas was designed by Jeff Schoen who had been one of the primary developers of X-Midas.
      • NeXtMidas borrows a lot of the design features from X-Midas.
      • NeXtMidas incorporates the "lessons learned" from years of X-Midas development.
    • At times NeXtMidas sacrifices Object-Oriented design to be "X-Midas'ish".
      • This makes it easier for X-Midas users to transition to NeXtMidas.
      • This also facilitates interoperability with X-Midas.
    • Prior to the release of NeXtMidas 2.0.0 in May 2005, NeXtMidas was required to be Java 1.1-compatible (even though Java 5 had already been released).
      • This was a customer requirement due to continued use of Netscape 4.7 (which was used to run some NeXtMidas applets).
      • This restriction played a major role in many design decisions.
        • NeXtMidas had to use AWT rather than Swing.
        • NeXtMidas could not use Java's New-IO (NIO) package.
        • NeXtMidas could only use a subset of the Java Collections Framework (this is why NeXtMidas has its own Table and KeyVector classes).
    • New versions of NeXtMidas generally support Java versions that Sun Microsystems support at the time of the NeXtMidas release. Usually this is the current version of Java plus two back versions.
      • As of August 2010, NeXtMidas 2.8.2 will run on...
        Java 6     <-- Current Version
        Java 5     <-- 1st Back Version
        Java 1.4.2 <-- 2nd Back Version (only supported under NeXtMidas 2.6.x and prior)
        
        When Java 7 is released, later versions of NeXtMidas will add support for it.
      • This policy parallels Sun Microsystem's policy for supported Java versions.
      • This gives the customer several years to upgrade systems before they need to upgrade NeXtMidas's single dependency, Java.